No One
by LegendsofLit
Summary: Jason may not be a great liar, but he knows that Annabeth is lying when she says this Jackson kid was no one special. One-shot.


**Callie (larkgrace) again. Hope you haven't gotten sick of me. This has been sitting in my computer for a few months, just waiting to be posted, which obviously I couldn't do earl****ier. You know, spoilers and all that jazz.**_  
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**Anyway, no, I do not own the Percy Jackson books.  
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**Inspired by VersaEmerge's "Father Sky."  
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* * *

_I gave my best away to no one specific, you're no one specific…_

* * *

To be perfectly honest, Jason was getting a little sick of this Percy Jackson dude, and he hadn't even met the guy. Not that he had a problem with Percy—how could you hate someone you didn't know?—but, hello, he was the new prophecy kid and all he ever heard was _Percy this, Percy that._ It made him want to wave his arms and scream, "Hey! Over here! Little help?" After all, he was supposed to be bonding with these guys, learning the ropes, but he couldn't seem to walk anywhere without hearing about the missing camper. These guys really needed to move on. At the very least, he would have liked it if someone would have told him about this Jackson kid. Most of his attempted conversations revolving around him went like this:

"You know," Silena, one of the Aphrodite girls, said, "you're pretty cute. Your eyes could give Percy a run for his money."

"Um…thanks?" he muttered, since he really couldn't think how to respond to that, "Who was Percy, anyway?"

Silena smiled. "Only one of the most desirable male demigods in history. I might have gone for him, but he was taken, as far as anyone but—"

"Hey," Charles Beckendorf protested, "what about me?"

"Don't worry," Silena assured her boyfriend, "you're _the _cutest male demigod in history. Hands down."

Jason had decided to leave before they started making out.

Another time, in the sword arena, he'd been stupid enough to challenge the head of the Mars (Ares, whatever) cabin to a wrestling match. Clarisse had pounded him into the ground so hard he was surprised there wasn't a legionnaire-shaped dent in the floor.

"Yeesh, Sparky," she had taunted, "you're even worse at this than Prissy was."

Connor Stoll, who had just been helping Piper strap on her arm guards, grinned. "And yet he could kick your butt with a blade."

"Shut up!" Clarisse snarled.

"Oh," Connor continued, "Don't forget the time in the bathroom when he soaked you with—"

"I said shut up!"

At the end of a week of interrogation, he had gathered that Percy Jackson was pretty popular, attractive to the opposite sex, may or may not have had a girlfriend (or a boyfriend, but _no _way was Jason going to ask about that), had a wacky sense of humor that usually elicited more groans than laughter, was a pathetic wrestler but a wicked swordfighter who had the guts to pick a fight with Ares' spawn (kudos to him).

In other words, he didn't know much.

He _did _learn that, whatever else you could say about the Greeks, they were some loyal kids. He remembered sitting in on a war meeting that had essentially turned into an argument between the campers and Chiron over whether or not they should send out search parties to look for Percy.

"I've told you before," Chiron the centaur sighed, "Dionysus was very clear. Percy will not be returning to us. There is no point in wasting resources with the war so close."

Silena jumped off Beckendorf's lap—Jason was a little surprised Chiron hadn't called them out for that—and yelled, "That's why we need to get him back! He's one of our best fighters!" There were shouts of agreement, even from Clarisse. Only Annabeth stayed silent, glaring at the ping pong table.

"We need to find him!" Connor said.

"There's no way he's gone for good," Katie Gardener agreed.

"He's too smart to get captured," Beckendorf chimed in, which pulled a snort from Annabeth, who had been quiet since the subject of Percy had been brought up, "unless it's something _really _bad. He needs our help."

"Yeah," Clarisse grunted, "and there's no way the little punk got himself kill—"

Annabeth jumped to her feet, her chair tipping backwards and clattering to the floor. The room hushed, except for the hum of the heated nacho plate, as she stared at the tabletop with bloodshot eyes. Jason counted five impossibly long seconds before she rushed out of the room. The other counselors, even Chiron, lowered their eyes like they'd just made a terrible mistake.

"Um…I'll go," he muttered, pushing his own chair back with a scraping sound that echoed in the breathless room. His footsteps reverberated through the floorboards as he wandered down the hallway. Annabeth was standing in the main room, her arms against the wall, her forehead on her elbows, leaning into the paneling like she wished she could sink into it. He maneuvered around the couch and stood next to her, gazing at a collection of pictures tacked to the wall, under a small banner that read "Hang In There". There were pictures of the cabins, group photos, blurry Capture the Flag shots, spontaneous snaps of kids sparring or swimming or goofing around.

Happy moments. Something to fight for. It depressed him to think that most of these people were probably going to die.

Near the center of the collage was a picture of Annabeth, leaning against the shoulder of a raven-haired boy with bright green eyes, the two of them exploding with laughter. She was smiling in a way that Jason had never seen her smile, her eyes bright instead of dull. Her fingers were mere inches from the boy's; like they were almost holding hands.

He turned to the real Annabeth, dead in comparison to her laughing double in the photo. "Who was Percy Jackson?" he asked quietly.

She sniffed and stared at the picture, studying it for a long moment. "No one," she said, her voice cracking, and he was pretty sure that she meant _the only one._

He had a pretty clear picture of who Percy Jackson was to her.

* * *

_You're no one specific, you're no one…_


End file.
